Category Archives: Software Tips

Turn off Kindle singles recommendations etc. [SOLVED[

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Some Kindle questions from readers: Q1. How do I turn off the annoying Kindle singles crap that takes up half of my Kindle’s screen?! Menu -> Settings -> Device options -> Personalize your Kindle -> Advanced Options -> Cover View Recommendations -> Off Q2. Can I get rid of recomendations, they are way off?! While you are at it, you can also turn off Special Offers Recommendations: Menu -> Settings -> Device options -> Personalize your Kindle -> Advanced Options

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Fixed skewed pages in ScanSnap

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I adore my Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 scanner. It lets me scan 70+ pages with ease (simplex or duplex) all the while OCRing every shred of text and therefore saving me oodles of time. Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Machttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATZ9QMOAwesome scanner which I really love. Easy to install and works seamlessly on my Windows 8 laptop. I use this all the time to scan and archive all the papers in my house and the… Read more However, today I

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Order SQL query manually when numeric string representation is out of order

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In some instances, doing a straight ORDER BY ASC (OR DESC) does not work as one might want: 0-50 101-200 201-300 301-400 401-500 501-600 51-100 601+ That is not how humans do it 😉 A way to get around this, is to add a new column and put in an ordering value, for instance: 1. 0-50 2. 51-100 3. 101-200 4. 201-300 5. 301-400 6. 401-500 7. 501-600 8. 601+ Now that is much better 🙂 Here is a real

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Disable Skype voicemail [SOLVED]

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I use a Google Voice number in conjunction with Skype. It allows me to receive calls at home via satellite internet. However, when I miss a call I want Google to take the voicemail not Skype. Thankfully, the steps for disabling Skype voicemail are fairly easy. First, go to the following URL: https://secure.skype.com/account?page=voicemail Second, click to uncheck the voicemail setting: That is it, Skype voicemail is now disabled! 🙂 *PS you may have to disable this annual, as I believe certain

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Format SQL code

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I have been writing copious quantities of SQL lately. Some of the queries are getting really long. When I am working with Navicat it has a nice ‘SQL beautify’ feature that takes messy SQL and makes it nice and tidy. 🙂 While that features is great when using Navicat for SQL editing, sometimes I need to workdirectly with SQL Server 2008 there is no comparable feature built into Microsoft’s SQL pane. 🙁 Thankfully, with a quick copy/paste there is an online tool

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Intel Centrino 6235 or 7260 Bluetooth not detected by Windows [SOLVED]

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I came across an interesting tip today: […] Samsung RC530 and a 7260.HMWWB. Bluetooth can’t be activated on some notebooks, so you need to activate it manually with a hardware “hack”. Just get some Scotch Tape / Sellotape (in german “Tesafilm”) and stick it on pin #51 (picture). Put the card back in the PCIe slot and have fun . […] this workaround works also for the 6235 and other Intel Wifi/Bluetooth cards.. via Intel Communities. Well worth checking out

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Select top 2 rows from records, grouped/partitioned by Unique ID

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The Problem: A client needed a query that selected the two most recent tour dates for each user ID. This is an easy task for a single user ID because specifying the user ID and an ORDER BY tour_date DESC with a LIMIT 2 clause would get the dates needed. However, when there are a lot of users it gets harder. For a single date, the MAX function works great but in our instance it will not work because we

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